On this episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast, I interviewed my good friend, Pam Hendrickson. Pam and I go WAY back. She is actually the person who interviewed me for my position with Tony Robbins, and was my first "big boss."

Pam and I have spent many hours working and traveling together. We joke that we spent more time together during certain seasons than we did with our husbands!

Pam worked for Tony Robbins for close to 20 years before going out on her own. Considering her experience with Robbins, she thought launching her first products would be easy, but she was wrong. In spite of the fact that the products were great, she made very few sales.

The turning point for her was when she learned how to give her customers what they want, and in this episode, we dive in deep about how to do that.

In this episode, here’s what we’ll cover:

• A key success principle for business

• What will cause your business to fail even if you have the best content in the world

• The necessary foundation for great marketing

• Common mistakes when defining a target market

• Tools for understanding your target market

• How to cultivate relationships

• Why technology will never replace face-to-face interactions

• And so much more!

Key Takeaways

• A key to success in business is not being afraid to make mistakes

• Great content alone isn't enough. If it isn't want your customers need and want, it won't be successful.

• The foundation of our marketing comes from understanding who our target audience is, and creating all of products and services based around that.

• Ideal customer exercises are great, but they don't go deep enough. It's important to go beyond who and really dive deep into their pain points.

• Product creation and marketing are easy when you truly understand your audience.

• There are three primary areas to focus on:

  • Tactical
  • Relationships
  • Emotional connection

• Tactical focuses on learning more about your audience. This is an ongoing process. In order to learn this information, you can conduct surveys, look at what your competition does to see what's working for them, and conduct market research using tools such as Keyword Spy and Ispionage.

• Relationships focuses on really getting to know your audience, and enable you to go deeper when it comes to truly understanding them and therefore really knowing how to meet their needs. A great example that Pam gave was that if you went to the gym and someone had you  fill out a survey, they would have a certain level of understanding about your needs. In contrast, if you went to the gym and spent time talking with the person exercising next to you, you would have a much deeper understanding.

• Emotional connection is when you really begin to FEEL what your audience feels. It goes deeper than having an intellectual understanding of their needs, and enables you to basically put yourself in their shoes so that you better understand them on an emotional level. This is the opposite of the tactical side of things because it focuses on feelings rather than facts.

Action Steps

• For a week or two, spend ten minutes per day researching your target market using tools such as Keyword Spy, Eyespionage  and Pew Research.

• To help you build relationships with your audience, pick one or two live events to attend. The goal is to have an opportunity to connect face-to-face with your target audience.

• Set aside 20-30 minutes to get quiet and FEEL the problems and pains of your customers.

A Special Gift from Pam for My Audience

Pam really went the extra mile by creating a special gift just for you, a free video training and report, which you can get here.

On this episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast, I interview my good friend, Laura Roeder.

I've had Laura on the podcast before, but I wanted to have her on again, because she is a master in setting up processes and systems to grow your business.

In this episode, here’s what we’ll cover:

• The difference between a project manager and a VA

• Why your project manager should work only for you, rather than have other clients

• How much you should pay a project manager

• The role of a project manager and what it takes to hire and train one

• A mindset shift that needs to happen before you hire your first project manager

• How you should think about how much you should pay your project manager, and what you should do less of so you an afford to hire help

• The golden ticket when it comes to hiring team members

• Why you don't have to find a project manager who is a perfect fit for your business

• And so much more!

Key Takeaways

• There are a lot of highly skilled, underemployed people out there now, who would love to work as a project manager

• You're in the right place to hire a project manager if you:

  • Feel overwhelmed, burned out, or emotionally exhausted

  • Have a bunch of ideas and projects you want to tackle but are too busy

• A project manager keeps you organized and helps you to continue moving forward with the things you really want to do

• It's more important for someone to have the ability to learn than it is for them to already know all of the programs you use

• Be willing to take the time to train your project manager and don't just tell them what to do, but why you want it done

• Spend less money on programs and then use that money to pay a project manager

• The main things a project manager should help you do:

  • Translate your goals and plans into daily tasks

  • Make sure things are being done on time and if they aren't, figure out why

  • Ensure not just that the work is done, but that the quality is high

This episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast, is the third Ask Amy episode.

This is a new feature that I’ve added to my podcast. As I mentioned in episode 30, every other week I’ll answer your questions about online marketing, Facebook marketing, Facebook ads, webinars and email marketing.

To submit a question, all you need to do is go to amyporterfield.com/askamy and leave me a recorded message. Your question just might be the very next one I choose for the show!

Here’s the summary of the question for this episode:

“In episode 29 you talked about how to hyper-target your audience using Facebook ads, and you specifically talked about retargeting. Can you put retargeting ads in both the newsfeed and the right-hand column and if so, which option works best?”

Key Takeaways

• Retargeting ads use a tracking pixel that you’ve put on your website. You can set the pixel to track for 30, 60, or 90 days.

• Retargeting ads are great because they allow you to target the people that really care about your brand; they help you connect with your website visitors on Facebook.

• You CAN place retargeting ads in both the newsfeed and in the right hand column.

• It’s important to set up your retargeting ads in the Power Editor.

• I have better results with ads placed in the newsfeed, but it’s important to experiment to find out what works best for you.

• Lookalike audiences are very valuable but the results you get back from Facebook can be huge -- as many as a couple of million people. To narrow down the results, when inside of the Power Editor, under the “Audience” tab, you can select age, gender and so on to target even further. In addition to that, you can further refine your targeting by indicating that they need to be a fan of at least one of the Pages you add to the interest section (again, under audience).